


Royal Colors

by Demmora



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Corvo attempting to be a good dad, Good times, Heartbreak, Loss, Low Chaos, Tags, ah that's right, and reader tears, anyway, helping your secret daughter pick out her coronation dress is important okay, hmm yes, my first ever Dishonored fic, ripe for the blender, the one that made me realize the fandom was an untapped wealth of angst, ugh god my soul
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-02
Updated: 2018-08-02
Packaged: 2019-06-20 10:15:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15532056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Demmora/pseuds/Demmora
Summary: If you could carve Corvo down the middle—and he was certain some people had tried—they would find he was a Kaldwin man through and through. Blue and gold, forever.





	Royal Colors

“Corvo, what color would my mother have picked?”

It is a simple and innocent question, but one loaded with so much emotional shrapnel it might as well have been a bullet through his gut. Corvo turned his attention from the missive in his hand and trained his gaze on Emily, careful to keep his expression neutral.

Emily was watching him expectantly, surrounded by swaths of fabric and servants dancing in attendance of their masters—proffering up bolts of fine silk and rolls of beading for her inexperienced attention. She was still wearing the royal white of a princess, the color starkly bright against the demure furnishings of her mother’s old apartments. Demure he thinks, only in the sense that they are not gaudy. Jessamine Kaldwin had been a lady of simple tastes, aware of the privilege the grandeur of her station afforded her, and careful to always present herself as simply as possible. It paid little to dine on nothing but sweetmeats and wine while others starved. Burrows had learned that too late to his detriment.

Clearing his throat, Corvo feigned a smile, and stepped over to her. He tried not to stare down any of the servants when they stepped back, one man raising a rolled length of fabric in front of himself as though to ward off attack.   
  
Corvo had been reinstated in his rightful position of Lord Protector some weeks ago, issued with a full pardon and declared as a free man once more, but many still acted as though he were a wild dog prone to biting. Which was as ludicrous as it was insulting. There was a whole host of guards with stiff necks and sleep dart wounds to act as testament to just how far from the truth that reality was. Absently he picked up the corner of some white lace and let it slip through his fingers. All things considered Corvo thought he’d acted with remarkable restraint. Especially given that it would have been so easy to carve a way through the filth and corruption, to wade in blood as a fisherman wades through the shore to collect his catch. It was easy to be a harbinger of chaos when every heartbeat brought with it a crushing ache of desolation, and every breath the need to scream with rage and unspeakable grief.

“My lady mother would have worn black …” Emily offered up, and Corvo nodded, fingers reaching for a bolt of black velvet laid out on the desk but stopping himself from touching it.

He could still feel it there, in the back of his mind, a howling raging beast that demanded blood and suffering as recompense. It had kept him alive more than once, kept him moving when every fiber in his being had begged to be allowed to lay down and die. It had been like walking a hairline tightrope over an abyss, near impossible to stay upright, and so easy to fall. It had become even harder after Jessamine’s murder and the Outsider had taken an interest.

Absently he brushed the mark on the back of his left hand, ignoring when it burned beneath the leather of his gloves.

“Not black,” he coughed, and cleared his throat again, hating the gravelly sound of his own voice when he spoke. Sokolov, reinstated as Royal Physician, had looked at the damage done to Corvo’s throat during his time in Coldridge Prison. The Tyvian man had tisked like an old maid about the practices of amateurs and prescribed warmed brandy to ease the discomfort. Apparently there was no cure for a man silenced so that he could not protest his innocence at the gallows.

“Not for a coronation.”

“I could continue wearing white …” Emily hazarded, holding up a thin gauze before her face. Instinctively Corvo pulled it away from her, careful to smile lest she see his unease. For a moment he hadn’t been sure if he’d seen a wedding veil or a funeral shroud in that innocent little gesture.

“No.”

“Then what?” Emily pouted, already bored with the task of picking out a coronation dress, the task made frustrating by how many decisions had to be made, with little help offered by anyone who didn’t wish to upset her.

It was a shadow of the frown she’d worn on her face when he’d rescued her from the tower and the guards had rushed forward to claim her. It had been Emily who had put herself between him and them before he could move, like a wolfhound defending her only whelp. It would have been amusing, had she not been so deadly serious. 

Carefully he reached out to bop the tip of her nose with his leather clad hand, smiling to see her frown disperse into something happier. She reminded him instantly of Jessamine, and realized with some small shock that Emily was only two years younger than Jessamine had been when Corvo had entered into her service. He’d been nineteen at the time, a mere boy though he’d felt so old compared to her. It seemed like another lifetime ago. It was, he realized with some sadness, a different life. 

“Pick something with color,” he said, thinking how dreary Dunwall seamed, and how the few remaining people might like to see some color on their new Empress.

“What about red?” she hazarded, and Corvo thought instantly of the Boyle manor, and the shapely form of the lovely red clad Lady Boyle held limply over his shoulder.

“Red?”

“Isn’t that the color of the Grand Guard?” her eyebrows raised in curiosity, and Corvo realized she was thinking of the Karnaca nobles in Serkonos. He blinked slowly, wondering what had made her think of that. He was the only Serkonian she had ever met, and his stories of home had been limited to the adventures of pirates and the jewel mines.

_Callista,_ he realized, all those weeks spent under the other woman’s care. He’d heard some of her lessons in passing, but he’d never really paid attention. While he was flattered she might think to wear the colors of his homeland, he knew it would be nothing short of political suicide for her to don the colors of a foreign land. Especially if those colors happened to belong to the Lord Protector whom many thought of as nothing better than a jumped-up thief catcher who had let the Empress die and was rumored to be the current Empress’ father—though Jessamine had never publicly recognized him as such. He’d listened to the scandalized rumors for years, that didn’t mean he had to let Emily endure it as well.

“Red is,” he cleared his throat, reached for his throat then stopped the gesture to let his hand fall to his side, “perhaps too colorful.”

Emily pouted again, and Corvo gave a little laugh of resignation and pulled a chair up beside her so he might better help. He’d never really thought much about what went into such things. He doubted Jessamine had either. She’d had a man for that, a man who had tailored for her father too. Corvo wondered if he could be found …

The servants, apparently made easier by his sitting, moved back in again and began offering suggestions—though Corvo noted that all solid bolts of white, red and black were removed from the room. It was when one particularly heavy looking roll of cloth was moved, that he spotted it.

Pulling off his gloves, he reached for the blue, almost teal fabric, and let his fingers run over the smooth expanse. He didn’t know why he hadn’t thought of it before.

Teal and gold were the colors of House Kaldwin, the banners of Euhorn Kaldwin, Jessamine’s father, finally being reinstated about the city, replacing the grey and red ones Burrows had put up in their place. Corvo had been _gifted_ to House Kaldwin—not _sold, gifted_ , the Duke of Karnaca had been very clear about that, as though the gifting of a possession was better than the selling to a slave—and remembered Euhorn well, even if the man had treated Jessamine’s request that he be named her protector as an indulgence rather than a serious request. Corvo fully expected the old man had already been thinking of Corvo’s replacement when he’d died. Not that Corvo had minded in the beginning … Jessamine had treated him more as an enforced play mate those first few years and Corvo had expected his dismissal into the palace guard as soon as she grew bored with him. He could still remember trying to hide his annoyance at having to carry a twelve-year-old princess on his shoulders, so she might better see the crowds. And of course, because he’d done it once she demanded it time and time again, even though she really had been too tall to be lifted up like a child and carried in such a manner. That still hadn’t stopped them from running through the palace hell for leather, skidding over marble floors and sending servants and nobles scattering as Corvo ran and Jessamine clung to his shoulders, laughing and shrieking her delight. It was highly improper, but Emperor Euhorn had been content to see his only child happy, and let the pair run wild for a time. Later on it would occur to Corvo how lonely her existence had been, with no one but court officials and her melancholic father for company. By then he had started to take his assignment to her more seriously and indulged her when she proffered up her ring hand for his kiss of loyalty, as though she were some Serkonian gang lord accepting fealty. It was a kiss he’d repeat for many years to come, and one that could be excused in public as _foreign ways_. A means to tell her he loved her, even when he could not.

“What about this one? Your grandfather’s colors…”

Those had been better times, and the color blue had been proudly displayed from every house window and every shop front. If you could carve Corvo down the middle—and he was certain some people had tried—they would find he was a Kaldwin man through and through. Blue and gold, forever.

“Ah, royal teal …” said a particularly high and nasally voice, drawing looks of annoyance from the other tailors vying for the young Empress’ attention. “If I might say, the young lady’s complexion would suit it perfectly, not too pale, not too …” his eyes flickered to Corvo’s swarthier skin then guiltily away, “ _sun kissed_ , either.”

“What do you think, Corvo?” Emily asked, holding a corner of the fabric over her little arm, flexing her fingers as though it were a particularly long fine sleeve and she were a queen of old.

_The kind who sat on thrones of bone, bathed in blood._

The thought came out of nowhere, and Corvo had to blink rapidly to dispel the image. In the back of his mind the Void howled, and Corvo gritted his teeth against it. He’d never been prone to invasive thoughts before the Outsider had marked him, but now he heard whispers on the wind. He’d given up all the bone charms and ruins, hoping that ridding himself of them and locking them away would stop the snake like rattling and whispering that slithered through his skull. But it had been hard, so very hard, to make himself put them away, as though he were chopping off his own fingers one by one. He could understand why many had gone mad while in possession of the Outsider’s trinkets. In the back of his mind he worried that he still might.

But no, this vision was not of this world, but another. One of the infinite possibilities the Outsider had whispered to him about while he slept. This was the here and now, and not what might have been.

“Corvo?” a hand waved in front of his eyes, and Corvo blinked, wondering how long he’d been staring for.

“Yes,” he said gruffly, clearing his throat and pushing up from his chair to wipe at the back of his eyes which still stung with the remnants of the vision. “I think that color would suit you.”

_Poor man,_ whispered the air, and Corvo realized he was hearing the thoughts of others, even without the beating heart in his hand, _it must be like looking at a mirror of the past …_ He looked round and found himself the scrutiny of one of the maids, who blushed hotly under his gaze and started back to whatever she had been doing before.

“And a gold trim?” the tailor asked, turning his attention equally between Emily and Corvo, seeming to realize that it would be wise to treat the Lord Protector as though he too should wear the royal colors. “We can make it as simple or elaborate as—”

“What’s the fancy lace …” Emily interrupted, turning her dark eyes upward in thought, as though trying to remember something, “that is sort of see through, but everyone pretends you can’t see through it?”

“My lady?”

“You know, it goes over the neck so it looks like you’re not showing your chest off, but you are. I saw it on a lady in the Golden Cat … I thought it looked pretty.”

Despite himself Corvo laughed, the sound coming out harsh in his damaged throat. “Young lady, you are ten. And even if you weren’t I’m not letting you go to your throne in a dress you saw at the Cat.”

Emily gave him a patient look, the kind only children and put-upon women can manage when grown men are being particularly ridiculous.

“No, _silly_. I meant the fabric. It was like netting but not.”

“Gauze?” the tailor hazarded, clearly hoping to get the subject away from whore houses and how on earth the new child Empress knew about such things. “Chiffon?” he offered up a sample of cloth which just so happened to be sheer and gold.

“Yes, that one!” Emily said happily. “I think that would be very pretty over the dress …”

“Like an outer layer …” the man thought aloud, losing some of his pomp as his gaze turned inward, clearly becoming lost in his work, “it could be attached by gold trim at the hems of the blue … let the blue shine through but soften it with the chiffon … it would work well for a coronation veil too …”

“Not over her face,” Corvo intervened, and saw the look flicker over the other man’s face, knowing that he’d caught his meaning. There had been too many people with their faces covered, too many shrouded in fine fabrics meant for ballrooms which would now only dance with Death.

“No. No, of course not, more of a hair cover … keep the Abbey appeased. Without actually doing so of course.” He smiled, and it was with some revelation that Corvo realized he may well have an ally in this cloth merchant.

“So, it’s a good idea?” Emily asked, turning her attention between both men, a row of pearls being worked between her fingers like a common prayer bead.

“Why it’s a marvelous idea, my lady.” the tailor said, regaining some of his nasal pitch. “With your permission I will start on the designs this afternoon.”

“You may,” Emily nodded regally, in a passable display of composure, then ruined it all my pulling both feet up onto the chair and launching herself at Corvo who had turned on some higher instinct to catch her. He let her clamber over his shoulders until she was sitting comfortably, then stood still as she addressed the wide-eyed attention of the servants. Behind him Corvo was aware of the maid quietly laughing.

“Gentlemen,” Emily announced as grand as any Empress ought to be, “you’re dismissed. Corvo, lets go, we’re going to see a man about some cakes.”

Adjusting his hold on her legs to something more secure, Corvo shook his head wryly and stepped out of the drawing room and into the hallway where guards stood. They snapped to such taught attention under Corvo’s gaze they near levitated off the ground, and Corvo became aware of Emily giggling at their antics. He looked up when she laced her fingers through his hair, pulling lightly to get his attention.

“Can we run?” she asked, hopeful.

Corvo gave her a measured look—or as measured as one can when looking upside down— then nodded, shifting his sword hilt out of the way as Emily slid down his shoulders to rest securely against his back, her legs wrapped tightly around his waist, her hands locked around his shoulders.

“Ready?” he asked, feeling her bounce with excitement and grinning despite himself.

“Ready!” Emily cried, and shrieked with delight as Corvo took off, running faster and harder than he ever had before.

Of course, it was at that moment that Sokolov exited one of his many rooms, flattening himself against the wall so as to avoid being trampled.

When the two had passed in a flurry of noise and movement, he grunted and righted himself, straightening out his jacket.

“Some things never bloody change.” he muttered. Though and observant onlooker would have noticed he was smiling.

 

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is ancient, but as per request, updated and uploaded <3


End file.
